The Burning of the Magazines

“I threw the magazine into the flames. It riffled open in the wind of its burning; big flakes of paper came loose, sailed into the air, still on fire, parts of women’s bodies, turning to black ash, in the air, before my eyes.”

In this short excerpt from “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Offered is remembering a time when she saw her mother and her mother’s friends burning magazines. What strikes me most about this section is the choppiness of the writing. When explaining how the magazine burned, she uses commas after every few words. When I read this, it reminded me of those flip books; the ones made up of images on paper that seem to move when quickly flipped through. What was the author, Margaret Attwood’s intention of doing this? I think it might reflect how Offered is forgetting her old life and that the world she used to know is slowly fading and becoming a series of still pictures that she can only look back on with little memory. The use of short descriptive words could also be reflective of how she now must interact in the world she is currently living in. It is made clear that handmaids are meant to be seen not heard and anytime they speak, they must do it in short, secretive ways. Perhaps Offered is so used to needing to choose her words ever so carefully, she has begun to do it in her head.

In the context of what this passage is saying, I think Offered could be thinking back on this memory as a not so fond one. Although these women had the ability to burn magazines and even read them, it may not be a positive thing because as Offered sees it, they are judging other women for their choices. The words, “parts of women’s bodies, turning to black ash”; I see this as her looking back and seeing that just as the Commander’s Wife looks down on her for what she must do to survive, her mother and the other women are looking down on what the ladies in the magazines must do to survive.

Comments

  1. Chelsea MannNovember 5, 2017 at 8:00 PM

    This passage also stood out to me and painted a very vivid image in my head which is why I think Atwood chose to write it in the "choppy" fashion you mentioned. It helps create emphasis on everything she wants you to see in your mind. The part that particularly stuck out to me was when she said, "...still on fire, parts of women’s bodies, turning to black ash, in the air, before my eyes." I think that this line has to do with that Offred watched the women, including herself, become property and loose control of themselves and their bodies.

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  2. UnknownDecember 3, 2017 at 2:19 PM

    GOSH this book just has so many wonderful things to pick apart. Initially when reading this passage, I thought of the many commas as a sort of way to portray quick-breathing or confusion in some sort of panic... which can be related to the connection you draw with the images being quickly flipped through, as it is a fast-paced seen in which memories and other things not allowed in Gilead disappear to nothing more than black ash.

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